The European Union and the United States of America have a common interest that nuclear material is managed worldwide in the most secure way. Nuclear material safeguards should apply worldwide and meet the highest possible standards, and necessary steps need to be taken to prevent dissemination of nuclear weapons of mass destruction. The EU and the US have a long standing tradition to cooperate towards this aim.
In 1995 the European Atomic Energy Community and the United States Department of Energy concluded an ‘Agreement in the field of nuclear material safeguards research and development’. During the IAEA Safeguards Symposium, on 2.11.2010 a new ‘Agreement in the field of nuclear material safeguards and security research and development’ with enhanced scope was signed by Euratom and the DOE, replacing the first one.
The Agreement of 1995 has been decisive in shaping the technical cooperation between the two organisations. It provided a platform for a number of US laboratories to work closely with the relevant services of the European Commission: the laboratories of the Joint Research Centre and the Euratom Safeguards Directorate, which applies many of the results in its own inspections and has helped to make some new techniques also available to the IAEA. The paper will report on some of the significant achievements seen throughout the years. A number of projects selected from the areas of non-destructive assay, destructive assay, modelling and calculations, surveillance and training will be discussed. An outlook on potential future activities under the new Agreement will be given.
In addition to nuclear safeguards activities, which remain in the focus of the cooperation, the scope of the new Agreement includes areas such as nuclear forensics, proliferation resistance and technical aspects of export control. Increasing emphasis will also be on training activities in both nuclear safeguards and security.